Honestly, Punk is the best option. If they make someone else the champ, they will get lower ratings. Punk is the reason they are still managing to stay alive with the ratings, if not for him they'd probably be down to 2.0's because of the stupid 3 hour with so much filler and pointless replays/touts.

Yeah, so you should all be thankful to Cm Punk. I personally have fast-forwarded every single Raw since its gone 3 hours, i'm surprised they even manage 2.8's, which is why Cm Punk deserves credit.

What are you talking about? Where is all your info coming from? Your ass? How do you know they will get even lower ratings if they make someone else champion?

What are you talking about? Where is all your info coming from? Your ass? How do you know they will get even lower ratings if they make someone else champion?

because logic. A heel with a one year long reign attracts viewers, they want to see him get beat up, a new challenger to take him on and beat him for the title. If they made someone like Ryback or Cena champion, with the dragging 3 hours, the few loyal viewers who watch it for Punk's title reign would go and their ratings would go straight down. Which is why the smartest thing is to go back to 2 hours right now.

Not entirely sure what you found so amusing that you LOL'd I didn't say I represented the entire viewing audience or that everybody else used DVR's (which is accounted for in ratings)...I was making the point that alternative ways of viewing shows have been available for years (including Youtube and downloading)...it's not just some new phenomenon that is all of a sudden causing ratings to suddenly plummet to the levels they are now at the tail end of 2012 like you and others like to imply. I could just as easily LOL at you comparing the viewing figures of completely unrelated shows to WWE. Of course viewing figures for things like American Idol will rapidly disappear over a shorter period of time...it was an interesting new concept to begin with (plus 2004 was still a time when those kind of shows were booming in popularity) but fast forward to 2012 and it's been same old shit year in, year out. It's been even more monotonous than WWE. American Idol may have morphed into The X Factor but it hasn't really changed much...pretty much mirrors the situation in the UK (we had Pop Idol which also became X Factor) where the bubble has burst on these kinds of shows and they don't pull the viewers they once did. Unlike WWE which has been around for decades, American/Pop Idol was a fad. It was never going to maintain a high viewership long term without things like developing characters and interesting storylines (not really possible on shows like that).

Honestly, I stopped reading your wall of text after this paragraph because you demonstrated in said paragraph your total lack of understanding.

When I said "top rated show", I meant, in the year 2004 the show WITH THE HIGHEST TOTAL HOUSEHOLD VIEWERSHIP RATING ON ALL TELEVISION was American Idol. The fact that is happens to be American Idol is irrelevant. It just happened to be the highest rated show on all of television. In 2012 it happens to Football. I'm looking at the "top rated show" and its rating. Has nothing to do with what that show may have been that year. In 2010, I think it may have been NCIS. Doesn't mattr. The numbers show the downward trend in TV as even the (again) TOP RATED SHOW IN ALL TELEVISION ON ALL CHANNELS has gone down 21%. If I could look at average rating among all television shows then I would, but it's not available. However, it would show the same thing.

because logic. A heel with a one year long reign attracts viewers, they want to see him get beat up, a new challenger to take him on and beat him for the title. If they made someone like Ryback or Cena champion, with the dragging 3 hours, the few loyal viewers who watch it for Punk's title reign would go and their ratings would go straight down. Which is why the smartest thing is to go back to 2 hours right now.

So why have the ratings fallen down so much during Punk's year long title reign then? I agree that they have to go back to 2 hours though.

Looking forward to seeing the buyrate. Most important thing is to see if they are up or down. People can bitch all they want about low ratings demonstrating the lack of interest in the product. That's fine.

But I'm assuming their 18-49 demo is not down that much so WWE wouldn't be losing too much money in term of advertising/marking. Especially with 3 hours. So to say their losing ad money is dumb. Buyrate you can put a clear price on. And they have not been bad with Punk and may be why they've allowed the reign to go 365

I believe he's above Orton right now, but not Sheamus or Punk. Orton's been really killed lately. . .getting knocked out by Barret twice, tapping out to Del Rio, getting KOed by Ziggler to interrupt what would've been a cool spot to put Orton ba ck in the spotlight, etc.

Orton's been getting semi-buried lately, losing WAY more matches than he should be, and he's losing them either 100% clean or 80% clean (short distraction then turning around for the loss, is not really a -very- unclean loss).

Can't be above Punk or Sheamus since Punk's champ, and Sheamus was just WHC for a long time. By default those two are above Ryback due to titles. Cena's above them all since he's still the biggest draw and biggest crossover star.

Okay, this breakdown is actually pretty steady for the most part. Of course it's in the poor range, but it's steady, which I suppose means it kept the people's interest who tuned in for the most part.

Ryback had the highest rated segment, but by my calculations, based on the gains/losses provided, his segment was not the highest viewership... unless I made some mistake (which is possible), but Punk's segment at the end seemed to have the highest viewership, followed by he 10PM, then the 9PM, and then the Miz/Otunga match.

That being said, with the Punk segment, it's both good and bad. Good because he did get the most amount of viewers for the show and what can still be a success to some degree because it certainly wasn't a failure as it was well above the ratings average for the show. However, it's also bad. The segment was all Punk and it ended up being one of the lowest overrun quarters of the year. Not to mention the gain was the weakest overrun gain in a couple of months. The fact that it was heavily promoted and it didn't bring in more viewers with the nature of the segment in mind, that's pretty fucking bad and feeds the whole "Punk doesn't draw' argument. However where I was hoping this segment would either sway me on the side of him firmly not being a draw (even though I'd of course still be a mark) or him being a draw with the right promotion much like any other top name, the segment didn't do either. There are positives and negatives for the numbers he got. You could argue he simply did the best he could if he did get the highest viewership, and there was no greater audience for tonight (as far fetched as that sounds). So yeah, I'm still in the same spot I was. Not a top level draw, but not a ratings bust either. Just in the middle of that who has his good nights, his good moments, and his bad nights/bad moments in the ratings game.

Let's talk about Ryback's segment, because while it is a success to some degree, getting the highest rating of the night, it's not all good either. He had the opening segment from SVS in the 8PM slot, the first thing people would see after Sunday's show and what they'd be tuned in and interested for, and all he gets is a 2.91? Much like Punk, it's great he did above the average and in relationship to the night of the show it was a good number, but in the grand scheme of things it was poor. Ryback's still in the same boat as Punk. Not a top level draw, but certainly not a ratings bust. Plus he'll now always have the 10PM segment from last week, which was the highest gaining 10PM segment in months, to work for him.

Ouch at the Vickie/AJ/Cena angle. I would've thought the whole kissing thing would've grabbed people in by word of mouth like it's done in the past, but I guess not. Still it's one of the highest viewers segments of the night for the show, but it still is a pretty sucky overrun/gain.

The big success of the night imo was Miz/Otunga in a random quarter gaining 223,000 viewers. They just might be on to something with face Miz. I've been thinking if Miz turned face I could see him winning the Rumble, and now if he keeps doing well in the ratings, I'd wager more on that happening.

But yeah, they started in a rut with the direct fallout from the PPV with Ryback's promo and Ryback/Tensai, and didn't really go anywhere. Some came, some left, but they never dug themselves out of that rut, and Punk's just not a big enough draw, even in a heavily promoted segment, to do that.

Good post man. I usually read them when I come across them in threads regardless of the length.

I'd like to talk a bit about your sort of sitting on the fence about the Punk ratings thing. Here's my personal take on that: While Punk isn't "losing ratings", he isn't bringing them in nearly as much as he's supposed to be as the main event and WWE champ. When you're in the main event slot (and being pushed as hard as Punk, you're supposed to be the most exciting part of the show that brings in people to watch the product, and hopefully stick around to watch everything else.

You know, like when The Rock makes an appearance (for example), people will stay tuned in to see if he pops up for a brief appearance despite knowing that his segment will be scheduled later. The "runoff" effect, where when you have a big star in the main event, the rest of the show gets pulled up by his coattails.

That isn't what's happening. The opposite is. Punk's ratings are roughly what a mid-show rating should be. Not a filler segment, but maybe the kind of ratings the 3rd or 4th best fued on the show would be getting. Then by default, the ratings for everything else starts to drop down since less people are giving a shit about the peak of the show.

So, imo, I don't think CM Punk can be exempted from the responsibility of bad ratings because of the nature of the way the show usually works. He is not bringing in viewers, and clearly isn't keeping them around either (as overall ratings have fallen pretty consistently over time and are still going down).

I'm interested to see what happens when Punk loses the title, because I am pretty close to 100% sure they are going up and staying there for months (on average), because of something different finally taking place.

So why have the ratings fallen down so much during Punk's year long title reign then? I agree that they have to go back to 2 hours though.

First of all, the ratings have been in a long descent ever since the Attitude Era, that is nothing new. Recently, the low ratings have obviously been caused by 3 hours, it is too long and drowns out anything good that happens. What i'm saying is that if someone else was champion the ratings would probably be much lower than they already are.

I think the biggest problem with the current title picture is that there just isn't this big face that everyone wants to see get the title. As someone pointed out a lot of the big face stars were the biggest when they were chasing the title. Cena is the closest one but it's been going on for so long, and it was screwed up by his surgery. There's also a good amount of people that don't want to see him have the title again.

Ryback became an attempt at doing something fresher but obviously that feud hasn't changed anything either. The celebration wasn't just about Punk, it was also about the feud since Ryback was invited.